LESLIE BELL, a psychotherapist writing in The Atlantic, tells young women who are worried about devoting themselves too much to men in their twenties that they should go ahead and have serious relationships — and pursue demanding careers too. This is the feminist solution: Be all things at once. In practice, this model boils down for most women to shortchanging private life and marriage. Bell writes:

I would never advocate that women return to the stereotype of the single woman pining for romance. But I do believe that young women who are taking risks in so many other important areas of life should also pursue experiences that may, on their face, seem to be at odds with independence and progress. The successful woman who is in a relationship is not the same as the pining woman. She’s the one who is acknowledging the full range of her desires.

Men are useful for fulfilling women’s “full range of desires.” Self is all.

In a similar vein, Erin Callan, the former chief financial officer of Lehman Brothers, writing in The New York Times, wishes she had balanced her career and personal life better. She is now childless and on her second marriage. She doesn’t come to the conclusion that she shouldn’t have had a high-powered career at all — and she certainly doesn’t conclude that she deprived a man of an important position or that she deprived others of the children she never conceived. No, she wishes she had had everything.

I didn’t have to be on my BlackBerry from my first moment in the morning to my last moment at night. I didn’t have to eat the majority of my meals at my desk. I didn’t have to fly overnight to a meeting in Europe on my birthday. I now believe that I could have made it to a similar place with at least some better version of a personal life. Not without sacrifice — I don’t think I could have “had it all” — but with somewhat more harmony.

But, yes she does think she could have had it all: “I could have made it to a similar place with at least some better version of a personal life.” Feminists believe they are entitled to top careers with no grueling sacrifices. One reason Callan became a top executive was that she was willing to do things such as eat meals at her desk.

What both these women deny is that most competent human beings desire mastery — not balance. Balance — in the feminist sense of the word — is a deadly bore.

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